Searching for Universals in Compounding

Guevara, Emiliano; Scalise, Sergio

doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-8825-4_6

Cited by 85 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…These two different types of compounds are presumably originated by two different morphological mechanisms (Radimský, 2013;Scalise, 1994;Schwarze, 2005). Traditionally, the headinitial structure has been considered as dominant in Italian (Scalise, 1994), but recent corpus analyses challenged this claim, suggesting that indeed headfinal compounds are numerically dominant, even in Romance languages (Guevara & Scalise, 2009;Marelli & Luzzatti, 2012;Schwarze, 2005). Although head-final structures are undoubtedly more frequent, in theoretical linguistics there is still a debate on whether this implies that the head-final configuration is the most productive mechanism (Delfitto & Melloni, 2012).…”

Section: The Issue Of Headedness In Compound Processingmentioning

confidence: 96%

Word structure and decomposition effects in reading

Arcara

Semenza

Bambini

2014

Cognitive Neuropsychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Theories on the processing of compound words differ on the role attributed to access to individual constituents. These theories are mostly based on empirical evidence obtained in experimental settings that could induce artificial effects normally not occurring in natural processing. In this study we investigated the processing of compounds as compared to noncompound complex words in Italian through a reading task with eye movement recording. We included both head-initial and head-final compounds, in order to test whether the position of the head may influence the reading process. After ruling out the effects of length and frequency, we observed that pseudocompounds (i.e., words with a segment homograph to a real word in the leftmost part) elicited longer total reading times than all other types of complex words, including compounds. Furthermore, head-final compounds elicited longer total reading times than head-initial compounds. The results suggest that a word structure resembling a compound may induce longer processing, presumably related to unexpected morphological structures. The results also converge with previous evidence that in some cases there is a higher processing costs for head-final as opposed to head-initial compounds, possibly indexing a reanalysis of the stimulus in order to correctly assign the constituent properties. However, a deeper analysis restricted to compounds revealed a more complex scenario where several variables interact with headedness (namely, first and second constituent frequency, compound frequency, and compound length), and future studies are needed to discriminate among possible interpretations. Overall, our findings suggest that longer reading times are related to solving incongruities due to noncanonical structures, rather than to morphologically complexity per se.

show abstract

Section: The Issue Of Headedness In Compound Processingmentioning

confidence: 96%

Word structure and decomposition effects in reading

Arcara

Semenza

Bambini

2014

Cognitive Neuropsychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Many languages have exocentric nouns, for example, but only endocentric compounds in other word-classes or, as discussed above, relatively rare exocentric compounds alongside relatively common endocentrics. Guevara and Scalise (2009) find that across some 3000 compounds from twenty languages approximately 69% are endocentric and only 8% exocentric. 5 While these numbers are concerned with a rather different notion of rarity, they make a point about the predominance of endocentrics.…”

Section: Transpositionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Exocentric compounds

Bauer

2008

Morphology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The notion of an exocentricity is explored, and some of the problems with it are mentioned. A range of exocentric types from a number of languages are introduced, and classified into a small number of major groups. Given that exocentric compounds are fundamentally defined by not being endocentric, rather than by having something in common, this cross-linguistic agreement is surprising. It is argued that there is always an analysis for such apparently exocentric compounds which does not involve invoking exocentricity, but involves a figurative reading-just not a consistent figurative reading across all types. It is suggested that exocentric compounding may not provide a productive means of word-formation, even if new exocentric compounds are arising.

show abstract

“…In fact, most natural languages have compound nouns at least (Plag 2003, Kortmann 2005. Even though lately there has been an emerging concern that research in typology and linguistic universals has dedicated little attention to compounding with a commonplace assumption that compounding is really pervasive in the world's languages (Guevara & Scalise 2009), the phenomenon has been investigated and adequately described in many languages of the world (see Lieber & Štekauer 2009). However, a critical assessment of the extant literature on compounding in linguistics reveals that providing satisfactory criteria for defining and or determining compoundhood still requires both language specific and cross-linguistic investigations for dependable generalizations.…”

Section: Universality Of Compoundingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determining Compoundhood in Ígálà: From Universal to Language Specific Focus

Omachonu¹,

Onogu²

2012

J. Univers. Lang.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In spite of the fact that compounding is really pervasive in the world's languages and despite the huge volume of literatures on compounding in languages, a critical assessment of the extant literature on compounding reveals that providing satisfactory criteria for defining and or determining compoundhood still requires both language specific and cross-linguistic investigations for dependable linguistic generalizations. As it were, there are hardly any universally

show abstract

Searching for Universals in Compounding

Cited by 85 publications

References 27 publications

Word structure and decomposition effects in reading

Word structure and decomposition effects in reading

Exocentric compounds

Determining Compoundhood in Ígálà: From Universal to Language Specific Focus

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About